Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion
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Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion section of the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Mass. As such, our focus starts there and spreads to include Massachusetts, the nation and the world. Since successful blogs create communities of readers and writers, we hope the \x34& Co.\x34 will also come to include you.

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By Rob Meltzer

Nov. 29, 2013
5:10 p.m.

From re-reading Kilcullen’s new book, I’ve been pondering the question of “real time” and its use in politics.

There was a great example from the MWDN, a mindless piece of fluff from Dana Millbank which accused Ari Fleischer and the Republicans of having a knee jerk reaction to the iran debacle before they even knew what was in the text. According to millbank “a couple of minutes after 9 p.m. on Saturday, word crossed the news wires that negotiators in Geneva had reached an agreement on iran’s nuclear program. Then, at 9:08 pm–before any details of the pact were known–Ari Fleischer delivered his opinion on the agreement…”

Except, except.† Before it went over the wire at about nine pm on Saturday, I had a copy of the text in my email box translated from Farsi into Hebrew into English. So, by the time it went over the wire, I knew what was in it, as did apparently nearly 3 billion other people who had internet access and who likely saw the copy released by the Iranians long before it was seen in the United States, or at least in terms of valuable minutes, because by the time it was seen here, the Iranians were already using the text to whip up a frenzy at home that the US and Obama had been whupped in Geneva.

In other words, Fleischer was apparently operating in real time, and millbank was not. And yet, I don’t see anywhere in Millbank’s story that he did any kind of investigation of the time line, or that he knows the facts, or that he tried any kind of traditional investigative methods before assaulting his political enemies. I mean, he could have picked up the phone. I think as of Sunday you could still get the timeline even from Google.

What i don’t understand is why this country, alone, doesn’t seem to operate in real time. There seems to be a lag between the time something happens and the time† we know about it, even if it is only a matter of ten minutes. We’ve had some discussion on this blog about censorship and editing of the internet. And Kilcullen’s books has an uncomfortable amount of material about the collusion between the US government and tech companies (who have become non-state actors) in American foreign policy, so one is left wondering whether the lag is intentional to allow the Regime to spin its own story before the news hits.† Because there have been a number of times in the past two years where you can find out info before you can access it through American sources. This is not a new issue, but it becomes key when fools like Millbank make an issue of it. First, something of a delay. Second, that delay being used by one of the Regime’s premier propaganda shills against political enemies. All of which is so Orwellian and scary, and rarely contested by truth.